1999 study predicted catastrophe in Washington mudslide area

This photo obtained March 25, 2014, courtesy of the Washington State Department of Transportation shows the Stillaguamish dam breach at SR 530, created after the landslide near Oso, Washington, on March 22, 2014 (AFP Photo) / AFP

With the death toll in last weekend’s deadly Washington mudslide likely rising to two dozen, a report commissioned by the US Army Corps of Engineers well over a decade ago predicted that a catastrophic landslide in the area was all but inevitable.

Rescue workers continued to dig through viscous muck and debris
under drizzling rain throughout Tuesday near the rural town of
Oso in Snohomish County, Washington. As many as 176 people are
listed as missing three days after a massive mudslide gushed down
a rain-saturated hillside, swallowing a neighborhood after
barreling over a river and a nearby highway.

"Unfortunately we did not find any signs of life today, we
didn't locate anybody alive, so that's the disappointing
part," Reuters cites local fire chief Travis Hots as telling
a media briefing. Hots noted that eight sets of remains had been
found as a result of rescue efforts, though the official death
toll would remain at 16 pending medical examinations.

Officials believe the number of missing could decline, as many of
those believed missing have been double-counted or have not made
friends and family aware of their whereabouts in a timely manner.

Search and rescue operations continued throughout the night and
were set to return to full strength at daybreak.

Meanwhile, a 1999 report filed with the US Army Corps of
Engineers warned of “the potential for a large catastrophic
failure,” the Seattle Times recently reported.

“I knew it would fail catastrophically in a large-magnitude
event,” though not when it would happen, said
geomorphologist Daniel Miller, who was hired to do the study.
“I was not surprised.”

Snohomish County officials have denied knowledge of the study,
while John Pennington, director of the county’s Emergency
Department, said local authorities had done their best to warn
residents of the landside dangers.

Pennington said residents in the area which had long been dubbed
"Hazel Landslide" due to the frequency of such events over the
last half century, "were very aware of the slide
potential," AP reports.

"We've done everything we could to protect them," he
said.

However, according to the Seattle Times, Pennington seemingly
contradicted himself by telling a press conference that the hill
“was considered very safe.”

“This was a completely unforeseen slide. This came out of
nowhere,” he said.

Patricia Graesser, a spokeswoman for the Army Corps of Engineers
in Seattle, said that Miller’s report had not been intended as a
risk assessment, but rather as a feasibility study for ecosystem
restoration.

Asked whether the agency should have done anything with the
information, she told AP: "We don't have jurisdiction to do
anything. We don't do zoning. That's a local
responsibility."

Miller, who also documented the hill’s landslide conditions in a
report written in 1997 for the Washington Department of Ecology
and the Tulalip Tribes, has extensive knowledge of the landform’s
volatile history.

Following the last major landside in the area, which occurred in
2006, Miller was shocked to see new homes being built despite the
inherent risks.

“Frankly, I was shocked that the county permitted any
building across from the river,” he said.

“We’ve known that it’s been failing,” he said of the hill.
“It’s not unknown that this hazard exists.”

Saturday’s landslide was not the first to strike an inhabited
area in the state. In the late 1990s, a slowing moving landslide
destroyed more than 100 houses in the town of Kelso. But the
event in Oso ranks among the deadliest landslides in modern US
history. In 1969, 150 people were killed in landslides and
flooding in Nelson County, Virginia.